Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome

This collection of essays is unusual in its content, its method, its authors, and the
way it came together. It is one of very few large-scale applications of feminist
theory to Greco-Roman antiquity; in fact, by starting from feminist theory we
named and collocated a set of ancient phenomena that would otherwise not have
received attention together. Many articles here are the first on their subject or of
their kind, and the authors likewise include new and radical voices. What we have
done constitutes part of an ongoing transformation of our field; it also serves to
bring our material to a new audience. Yet as feminists we vary considerably in our
approach, both in the kinds of theory we use and in the stands we take on the
embattled issue of pornography. Finally, to an extent unusual in Classics, we wrote
this book together; a collective made up of the six original panelists read all the
papers, and rewriting took place in the context of group discussion and with much
pooling of bibliography and ideas. Whatever effect we will have on our field, the
experience has certainly transformed us as a group.

We share the following assumptions. (1) Our work fits into the discipline that is
coming to be known as cultural studies. It is a methodological axiom of this volume
that text and social context are interrelated, and we all consider issues of audience
and conditions of production. (2) With this axiom firmly in place, the application of
feminist or other modern theories to ancient material is not inherently problematical. Feminist theoretical models of the pornographic not only help us to
understand what is going on in some ancient texts, images, and behaviors but also
correspond with explicit Greek and Roman self-analyses. Furthermore, since some
of the texts discussed here continue to enjoy canonical status, an adequate the-

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